Turned out to be a wonderful weekend for Vancouver Opera. Vancouver Sun reporter Gillian Shaw recently interviewed arts organizations who are using social media for brand awareness and to help sell tickets. Not only did Vancouver Opera get coverage in this weekend’s arts and life cover story, but also as an accompanying side feature.
From the main article, A Symphony of Tweets:
Opera might not be the first entertainment that springs to mind when you think of leading-edge technology, but the Vancouver Opera is flipping the traditional image with its social media strategy.
The VO’s social media manager Ling Chan attributes that to general director James Wright, who is willing to try new initiatives, whether it’s blogger nights or a tweeting Opera Ninja.
“We started in May 2008 because our general director wanted us to have a blog,” said Chan. “When we started the blog we also started a Facebook account, YouTube and Flickr and in February 2009 we got onto Twitter.
“Management was very progressive and open about it. We’re at an advantage to have management that even thinks this way, we took the idea and just ran with it.”
And the supplemental interview with me, Vancouver Opera Gets a Standing Ovation for Social Media Initiatives:
The Vancouver Opera never really dabbled in social media, it dived in headlong.
According to VO social media manager Ling Chan, it started with general director James Wright wanting the VO to start blogging in 2008.
That prompted Facebook, YouTube and Flickr accounts as well. And less than a year later, the VO was on Twitter.
Chan is diligent in keeping up the blog, a potential pitfall for organizations that can launch into social media with great fanfare, only to go silent and leave their blogs, Twitter streams and Facebook abandoned and outdated.
Chan posts three to five times a week and ensures all the VO’s events are posted throughout the organization’s social media sites, with behind-the-scenes looks, interviews and pre-show production photos and videos shared on Flickr and YouTube.
It looks like there’s 2 versions of my interview: the complete write-up for online titled Vancouver Opera Strikes a Digital Note, and the above mentioned, edited for newspaper.
A triple win for the VO this weekend, with exposure online and in print from Friday through to Sunday. Wowzers. I remain thrilled that people like what I’m doing at the opera. Very thankful and very appreciative of all this attention. And you betcha buttcheeks I ran out and bought the weekend paper. This one’s going up my wall.
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